My core conviction is that the American people are less divided than they seem. That the American people are hungry for something more authentic in the national arena. That people are more reasonable and open-minded than they seem.

Drifting down the river in the afternoon, gazing up at the blue blue sky, slipping past golden eagles as if they were sparrows or wrens, examining the famous White Cliffs that Lewis said had the feeling of “scenes of visionary enchantment,” and at times just pulling the paddles into the canoe to feel the gentle but inexorable tug of the continent, this too is paradise on earth.

I thank God that I was alive when it happened. It was surely the greatest human achievement in my lifetime, one of the handful of greatest moments since we crawled out of the sea and found a way to stand upright.

There is no greater freedom than being somewhere in the American West with nowhere you have to be, ambling in search of the perfect platonic campsite, living on little, and just giving yourself to all that astonishing open public land.

"We should always listen to science. Science is not political. Science is rational."

— Clay S. Jenkinson portraying Thomas Jefferson

President Thomas Jefferson answers listener questions this week, including inquiries about Jefferson and wine, Welsh “Indians” in the Dakotas, repairing friendships, and the idea that “the rain followed the plow” during Jefferson’s time.

My core conviction is that the American people are less divided than they seem. That the American people are hungry for something more authentic in the national arena. That people are more reasonable and open-minded than they seem.

About Clay

Clay Jenkinson grew up on the western plains of North Dakota, not far from Theodore Roosevelt’s badlands.

He attended the University of Minnesota, Oxford University, and the University of Colorado.

He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. All of his degrees are in Renaissance English literature.

Clay has won numerous awards, including the National Humanities Medal, the highest honor conferred on a public humanities scholar in the United States. He has been named Humanities Scholar of the Year in Kansas, Nevada, and North Dakota.

Clay was one of the creators of the modern Chautauqua movement. He has portrayed a dozen historical characters, including Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Meriwether Lewis, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and John Wesley Powell.

He has appeared in three Ken Burns documentary films, including the most recent film The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. He has made four documentary films himself. Clay has written nine books, including the critically acclaimed The Character of Meriwether Lewis.

Clay lives in Bismarck, North Dakota, where he is a distinguished scholar of the humanities at Bismarck State College and the founder of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University.

His deepest concerns are the education of his daughter and the future of the Great Plains.